A Day in Port Ellen....

Today was a fairly easy day as everything we were attending was in walking distance of our base for the festival . First off was the Port Ellen Maltings Masterclass . We were given a brief tour of the Maltings to begin with , right from the steeps to the kiln , we then moved on to the engineering department (part of the original Distillery) to get talked through the history of the maltings , the finer points of malting , what exactly happens and how a Bag of Chocolate Eclairs and Marsh Mallows can explain what happens to a grain of Barley in the process ! After Peter Campbell had given us a 6th edition Port Ellen (which i must say is probably the best of the annual editions i've had ) , we headed back to the main buiding for more drams and a bite to eat . Here i met up with 3 participants of the sites forum , Rene , Michael and Matt , Eventually we ended up back at Tigh Cargaman for a few drams and a natter .

After the guys left and we had something to eat we headed along to Ramsey Hall for the Nosing Competition , this was the second year we'd attended this and we certainly hoped we'd do better than the "failed Miserably" of last year . A fairly sucessful score of 3 out of 10 on the night (unless you've done it don't laugh , it's bloody hard!) , at least i identified the Ardbeg , the Lagavulin and the Jura (smell give it away.......) .